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The Majority Report with Sam Seder
3640 - Trump's Economy Hangs by a Thread; GOP Assault on Black Voters w/ Heather 'Digby' Parton
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Folks, it's May 8, which means that May 10 is two days away from us. And that is Mother's Day this year it came early or something. So a lot of people caught off guard. What are you gonna get your mom? Well, I know one thing that you could get her. Get your mom an improvement in the quality of her life. Something she'll actually enjoy. Tasty gummies From Sunset Lake Sabadeh.com now through May 11th, you can save 35% on all Sabadea and THC gummies when you use the code MOM26 at checkout. MOM26 at checkout. Now look, here's how you do it. I mean it's a, you're a little bit late, but you order the gummies. Then you send your picture a mom. You send your mom a picture of your, of the website Easy peasy. And she's going to love these. And frankly you don't even have to necessarily get them for your mom to use. Mom 26 at checkout. For instance, I have begun to hit the goodnight gummies hard. The past I've used the goodnight oil, the goodnight gummies, have a little bit of THC and I thought that maybe like I can't do that at night but it's because of the Saba day and the Saba en. It's having the right effect, if you know what I mean. Well, I'm sleeping. I mean that's, I'm not going to be coy about that. It doesn't matter. Also, whether you're shopping for a mom who deals with chronic aches and pains, somebody battling stress, or a new mom who just needs a good night's sleep or you know, again, it's not mom specific but in terms of the savings but a great gift for them, these gummies are the perfect way to show your appreciation. They have the goodnight gummies, they have the SEBA day gummies, they have the Relax and focus gummies and some with just like the vibe gummies to have some fun. All of their products are pesticide free. You're buying directly from the farmers in a mostly co employee owned company with great farming practices. Like I said, no pesticides. They use regenerative farming and their movement partners, they have donated tens of thousands of dollars to things like Strike Relief Fund, Refugee resettlement, Planned Parenthood. Great company, great product. Don't wait though because this sale ends on Monday, May 11th. Head over to sunsetlakesebade.com use the code MOM26MOM26 for 35% off. See their site for terms and conditions. Quick break. Not quick break, actually. Let's start the show
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the Majority Report with Sam Smith Cedar where every day is casual Friday.
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That means Monday is casual Monday, Tuesday casual Tuesday, Wednesday casual Hump day, Thursday casual Thurs. That's what we call it. And Friday casual Shabbat.
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The Majority Report with Sam Cedar.
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It is Friday, May 8, 2026. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today. Looking back on the week, that was Heather Digby, partner. It's only been 20 years that I've been saying her name. Contributing writer to Salon and proprietor of the Uber blog Hullabaloo. And also on the program today, actually our second guest was unable to make it because of a flight cancellation and then was stuck on a flight and then couldn't call us. We'll talk more about that in a bit. What are you going to do? Nobody's disappointed around here. Meanwhile, also on the program, Iran and U.S. exchange fire during their ceasefire. U.S. intel says Iran can outlast the Trump blockade for months and months. This just breaking. The Virginia Supreme Court tosses out the redistricting referendum which would have netted Democrats four seats in Virginia. Meanwhile, a new report shows that the Supreme Court used faulty data in their Voting Rights act decision. And Tennessee passes a new map disenfranchising black voters. They added a provision to remove an obligation about informing voters of their new polling locations. Alabama next up, then probably Missouri, all to disenfranchise black voters and arguably Cities. Trade court US trade court rules Trump's 10% tariffs illegal. There is a widening circuit court split. The 11th circuit is the latest to rule that Trump's no bond for immigrant detainees is illegal. That's two circuit courts ruled one way to two, ruled the other. This is headed to the Supreme Court soon. Starmer over across the ocean, the pond, as they say, won't quit, he says. After huge labor losses locally, U.S. payrolls increase more than expected, but manufacturing jobs are down and wage gains are overpowered by inflation. New York State passes a budget including the pied terre tax on the rich and also provisions to fight ice, including a ban on masks and a ban on local collusion. However, Hochul allows unofficial communications to continue between ICE and local officials. Florida and the feds discuss closing the detention center in the Everglades, cutely known as Alligator Alcatraz, in part because it's costing a million dollars A day to the state of Florida and their immigration stuff cost them over 10,000 jobs. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Well, should we just discuss the bad news?
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Yeah, yeah. Hello, Sam.
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Oh, it's Emma Viglund. Sorry. Yes, we're very casual. Casual.
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C
Very casual.
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The we had expected to be talking to Graham Platner and that is our we got canceled music that we got. So they had some flight issues or something like that. I don't know what it is, but
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C
we're very disappointed in you, Graham. We're very bit of a red flag if you ask me, reconsidering that Nazi tattoo stuff. Stuff.
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Now, sometimes when people, you know, a little afraid to get questioned. But we will, I'm sure we'll reschedule sometime very soon.
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C
We only support politicians that come on our shows. Right. That's how responsible left wing podcasters operate.
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Of course, if you don't come on the show, it's quite clear that you're
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C
not serious about the movement.
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Yeah. You're not serious about the movement or getting elected. And so we'll see. Now, he's been on before, to be fair.
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C
He has. With just me, though.
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Yeah. All right. Meanwhile, so cool, Emma.
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C
I know, right?
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Meanwhile, things are looking increasingly bleak for the world economy. It is not hard now to find well known economists saying we are headed into a global recession because of Donald Trump's tiny little excursion to the Middle East. Let's just take a little bit of a tourist. Here is Carlyle Group's chief strategy officer of energy pathways, Jeff Curry on Bloomberg. This was two days ago, number 10.
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Oh, sorry.
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C
Oh, yeah. This is nuts.
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When do storage tanks run empty?
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Parts of the world like Australia, Philippines, Thailand, you are. But the question is, is when and where? You know, I still say the review, you know, it's going to be, you know, sometime in the month of May that you're going to end up with Europe hitting tank bottoms. And in the US it's somewhere in that July 4th time period, if not sooner. By the way, the inventories number coming out of the us the ones we got last night, the ones last week, I've never seen anything like that before. And I think that it's important to remember that these inventory numbers, let's define terms a deficit versus a shortage. We have a deficit today, meaning that demand is above supply and we're drawing inventories. It's not a shortage yet. So to answer your question, you have the shortages in places like, you know, Asia, and it's not that bad yet because you're not completely at tank bottoms, but in places like Europe and the United States, you're in a deficit. And you don't hit the shortages until you hit tank bottoms.
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All right, so just, just to be clear that the other day on the program we had Rory Johnston on, and in many respects the what we saw with the tariffs where you had people, you had importers importing a bunch of extra stuff in anticipation of the tariffs. And so they're selling out that inventory at a reduced cost. And then once they run out of that and they have to import more stuff, the cost goes up. There's a similar dynamic that we have that's happening with oil. We have a certain amount of reserves. I'm not talking about the strategic reserves, although a lot of that was released already by Trump. But these reserves are what we're relying on because the flow, the supply of oil is just not there. And at one point those reserves get empty and then the actual deficit of oil that the world is getting again, we are down a billion barrels already annually. So at one point this catches up and that's looking bleak. Meanwhile, you can see it apparently in major appliances, which are, they tend to be a leading indicator. Here is Taylor Riggs on Fox Business News of all places.
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So comments from executives are coming out and they're saying that they haven't seen demand this low since 2008, that this feels like recession levels to them. They're citing a number of factors. Record low consumer sentiment, the economic impact of the Iran conflict, severe weather, all of that drove what they're saying is 7% traction in industry demand during the first quarter.
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C
We also played yesterday in the fun half this clip of Kevin Hassett who was basically saying that he just spoke to a credit card executive and people may be spending more on gas, but they're spending more on other things too. Isn't that a great thing? And at the end of last year, Q5 or, sorry, Q4 of 2025, we hit another record of credit card debt, $1.28 trillion. So, yeah, the credit card executive is pleased as their, you know, credit cards now have an average rate of 20% or something like that that people are spending or have to put more on credit cards, but it's not a good indicator for the health of the economy.
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Oh, and make no mistake about it, Shell, the British based oil company, they had massive profits. They had 24% increase in profits in the last quarter. That is huge. And it's only going to get higher since then because you have these shortages which ultimately they end up just increasing the, the money they get per barrel of oil. So we're gonna see more about it. They don't have a problem with this. Here is, and I should also add, when we talk about 2008, that was known as the Great Recession because it was so close to being a depression. You don't want to be compared to that one. There's a bunch of other recessions they could have compared it to, but that was the great one. Here is Donald Trump saying, you know what, it's not that bad. I thought it was going to be worse. What are the stats in these talks are very good. Just give some insight as to where.
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We've had talks and we've had some good talks before, as you know. And all of a sudden the next day they're like, they forgot what happened. You know, they're proud. Like these guys are proud. Nobody more proud than these guys. Sometimes they fight on pride because, you know, they're injured, they're hurt. No matter how great you are, you get hit by somebody else that looks like them. It's very tough. But they have great pride. These people have great pride. The others do, too. Enemies have great pride. We went into Venezuela, smart people, great people, a really strong military. We won it very quickly and we have a fantastic. It's been a great thing for Venezuela. The people are really happy. They're dancing and it's streets because they have a lot of money coming in through the big oil companies that are all moving in. I was with ExxonMobil last night. The chairman was here. And we're talking about Venezuela along with a lot of them. Chevron, they're all. They were all here last night. They all want to go there and elsewhere. We just hit a new high in the stock market. The stock market's the highest it's ever been. And I expected that the market would be down 20, 25%. I was willing to do that to get rid of a crazy country. Crazy. The people look, you know, you talk about regime change, their first level leaders are dead. Their second level leaders are dead. Some of their third level leaders are dead. I call that regime change. But I thought we'd be down maybe 20% and we're up. The stock market's higher now than when we started this war. And I thought oil prices would go to 200, $250. It's at $100 now. And I think you're surprised and I'm surprised. But even if it went to 200, it would have been Worth it. I understand that we had just set a record 50,000 on the Dow, 7,000 on the S and P. A record. And I said, I hate to do this, but we have to make an excursion down to Iran because we can't let them have nuclear, a nuclear weapon. Look, and this is very simple, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.
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So here's the good news to all of you paying a $50 more minimum, as I say, 150% of what you were paying three months ago for gas, the stock market's up. So if you're One of the 20% in this country who has real holdings in the stock market, you're in great shape. You can pay for your new gas, you know, your gas guzzler, but the rest of you, well, suck an egg.
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One note on that front page of the Financial Times today, record low number of stocks driving Wall street bounce raises fragility fears. Five big tech groups repel the rally. Analysts warn of sharp sell off.
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So even that and this has been going on for a while, I mean, you know, there's every reason to believe there's going to be some type of massive stock market correction. And you know, I'm certainly not going to give out any financial advice but and I don't think we've seen nearly the end of the cost of gas at the pump.
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C
Well, when he says 200, $250 a barrel, why is he pulling that number out? It's because that's the warnings that he's pay panicking internally. We'll play a clip of him later completely unloading on what, shockingly another female reporter. But he is panicked because he's unable to get a victory right now with Iran that has all of the leverage here. And they're hoping that they're going to come back with this proposal that Rubio sent earlier today. But we'll see.
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And the difficulty is that it's quite clear the US Is not interested in negotiating in any type of good faith. They just like replace somebody on the negotiation team with remember what organization it is. But this is like pro Israel negotiation. I mean, organization specifically putting one of these people on the negotiation team sort of signals like we're not, we're not that into it. It's bizarre and we will see. It's, there's a lot of reason for concern at this point. I mean, jobs numbers were beat expectations but if you look at those numbers, healthcare jobs, don't know necessarily the quality of those jobs. But manufacturing down again
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C
like in his first term and in his second Term. Just something to note.
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Make America great. What was all that tariff stuff about if it wasn't about trying to build new factories? They don't talk about those factories too often anymore, do they?
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C
Howard Lutnick got rich. Isn't that all that matters?
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D
Just give it a couple more years, guys. It's all gonna have factories stocked by robots giving you dividends for nothing,
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everybody. Ubi, In a moment, we're gonna be talking to Heather Parton, or you may know her as Digby. First, a word from our sponsor today. Here's another great gift for Mother's Day. What does your mom want? Your mom, of course, wants you. They want you. They want you, your kids, your sister, your brother, your cousin. What's your life like? Call me. I want to hear more about what you're doing. And how could you do that? Well, it's super easy with an aura frame. What is an aura frame? Aura frames are the best digital frame on the market. They have an incredibly easy to use and intuitive app where you can send pictures to the frame and videos up to 30 seconds long with audio. And you can do all this before they even get the frame. You can do all this without even having the frame with you. You buy the frame, you load up the pictures, you load up the videos, you send it to your mom and she loves it. I had given my mom an aura frame. My girlfriend's parents, I gave an aura frame. They loved it so much, they got a bunch of kids, they gave one to each one of their kids. They bought an extra one for their house and all the kids can send pictures of their kids or them or, I don't know, their puppies or whatever it is and they can even dictate which frame in the house it goes on. So it's incredibly easy. You get a, you chip in with your, your sister, your brother to get a frame for your mom. You both get an app. You both can load up photos. It was named number one by Wirecutter. You can save on the gifts mom love by visiting auraframes.com for a limited time. Listeners can get $25 off their best selling Carver mat frame with the code majority. That's a U R A frains.com promo code majority. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. And also we should say, you know, it's not just obviously for moms, you can get it for anybody in your family. You can get it for a friend and just have like prank stuff all the time. That's what Brian does, essentially. When he gave it to his dad, he uses it to torment him. Yeah, what's the point of having parents if you're not torturing them? Exactly. Maybe we should cut that out of the it's Aura. Frames a U R a frame.com and the code is Majority will put that information in the podcast and YouTube description and @M majority FM. Quick break. When we come back, Heather Digby Parton.
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Sam. It's. Sam.
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Are you ready for some tv? Nice. Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, the dulcet tones of I can't remember who wrote that song.
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E
I don't think I ever knew.
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D
Have to look that up.
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But regardless, thank you. And a great way to introduce our next guest, Heather Digby Parton, writer@salon.com and proprietor, proprietor of the Uber blog Hullabaloo. Hi, Digby.
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E
Hi, guys. Glad to be here.
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Great to see you, Heather.
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Way to end the week. Another week, another week. Yes. Feels like a year it the week.
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As the week progressed, it feels like it got worse. And let's, let's start with the most recent. I barely had a chance to read into this. The Virginia Supreme Court came down with a ruling that found that the Virginia referendum was illegal. And if I understand correctly, I just read quickly, it was because the vote, they're supposed to take two votes for a referendum on the either side of an election of a general election. And supposedly one of the votes took place in early voting of one of the elections. And therefore they didn't really do it on either side of the election because the election was ongoing. Quite the technicality. We should also say before you go into this, that the way that they pick Supreme Court justices is that the legislature votes on it, but they've had a split legislature for some time in Virginia. So three of the members of the court were picked by Republicans, one by a Democrat, and then the other, I think it was three were in a sort of bipartisan fashion. So you gotta imagine at least one or two of those are Republican essentially leaning. And so there you have it. You know, this is a crap show because we're looking at now a lot of states that are Republicans are moving aggressively, particularly in the wake of the Voting Rights act dissolution. And there's going to be a net gain much bigger than we had anticipated just even a week ago.
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E
Absolutely. I mean, this is pretty devastating, I have to say. And it's not just devastating because of the numbers, although that's part of it. Having the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights act, which of course these red states just immediately went in and are decimating every black district. They just did it in Tennessee yesterday. You know, they're gonna. They split Memphis three ways, and now there will be no black representation in Tennessee. So the only Black representation in U.S. congress will be in blue states, and red states won't have any anymore. It's just absolutely insane. But, you know, very depressing. Not unexpected. I mean, I have to say, I really. I knew it was coming. I'm sure most people did, because John Roberts and the, you know, the rest of the conservatives on the court have been angling to do this for, well, for decades, since the Voting Rights act was enacted, essentially. So, you know, basically, it's just. It's a racist ruling. We had many of them right up there, I think, with Dred Scott, you know, some of. Some of these. Plessy versus Ferguson, the famous ones. This is going to be one, too. Calais, you know, versus Louisiana is going to be one of those. And so we're dealing with that which we knew was going to be bad. And then to have. So what are they doing? They're down in Florida now. They have a Supreme Court. They have a Supreme Court decision. They actually had a, I think a constitutional amendment that said that you can't. That the legislature is not allowed to do redistricting. They're doing it. It's going to go to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court looks in every way like they're going to just allow it to happen because it's Florida. So they do things like that in the red states. And they just say, yeah, whatever you need, Don, you know, Dear Leader, whatever you need. And whatever you need. Republican Party. So they're gonna. They're gonna gain a bunch of seats, as you just said. And then in Virginia, where it went, you know, this was a referendum. People went out and voted in large numbers and they voted to redistrict tens
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A
of millions of dollars, maybe up to $100 million spent on this.
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E
Yep. And it was. That's the Democratic way. Right. I mean, you have the people vote and people came out on both sides. It wasn't particular. It wasn't an overwhelming vote, but it was decisive. And the, you know, the. The Democratic side on that prevailed. And their Supreme Court, which, as you just pointed out, is packed with a bunch of Republicans, decided on a very. What appears to be. I mean, I just gave a cursory glance at the opinion, too, because we just came on. We just came on and it was just released a little bit ago. But it's. It's what you say. I mean, it was just a very thin technicality that they could have, you know, they could have easily, you know, ignored and ruled the other way. But of course, they took the opportunity to do this, which is how they work. And the Democrats, meanwhile, I just read that the head of the, that the speaker of the state assembly or whatever, not Louise Lucas, who's of the Senate, of the state Senate, who was the one who sort of spearheaded this drive to get this vote, it's the other guy, his name is Don Scott. I think he came out and said, well, we respect the decision of the Supreme Court. So they're not going to do some of these things that the Republicans are doing in these states, which is everything from just ignoring it and going ahead and doing it anyway to changing, you know, to, you know, basically suspending elections to doing all kinds of things. And they could do this. I mean, they could just say they could pass, they have a majority, they could pass a law and make it retroactive that, that this, you know, reasoning that the Supreme Court used is not valid and just go ahead and do it. Just, you know, okay, go ahead. You know, we'll decide after the election whether we were right to do that. That's the kind of thing that they should be doing. And they probably, it appears anyway that they do not have an appetite for doing. And that is an absolutely devastating blow. And not just because of the numbers, as I said in the beginning. It's also because of what it's going to do to the Democratic base where, you know, the people who needed to come out and vote in vast numbers this fall to try and overcome this, what they're going to do, to just try and eke out now what we thought was going to be a big wave and maybe be a big majority when we could actually, you know, have some real action in the House if we're lucky. And it's not impossible, it's certainly possible to do it. Some of these districts that they have in Virginia may very well go blue because they weren't big red districts to begin with in the original districting, maybe even in Florida, where they're taking a big chance on redistricting down there, because they are, you know, this looks more and more like it might be a dummy mander down there where they've actually, they will be diluting their, their safe districts into something where Florida could actually, they could actually lose a couple of seats, Texas as well. But, you know, this is not how it should be. And if you, if you just sit there and tell Democrats, well, sorry Guys, Yeah, they do what they want and we, we follow the rules and we do every, you know, we follow the procedures and the norms, and we're very proud of ourselves and we feel really good about ourselves for doing that because we're upholding norms while they are based on turning the country into a fascist state. Kind of hard to get people to come out and vote for a party that does that in this situation. Kind of hard to get people to do it.
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C
And the juxtaposition of how this was done via voter referendum and you get voters to come out to decide this and what is happening with these Southern states where they're not asking, votes have already been cast in some of these instances, they're not asking the voters how they feel about the maps. They're ramming it through. And I know, of course, the Supreme Court and the Virginia State Supreme Court are two different bodies, but I think it's a really important thing for people to observe that in times of anti democracy and fascism, you have neutered legislatures and empowered courts, whether it's dred, Scott, whether it's the court that FDR had to fight and threatened to pack. And now we're here in another moment of anti democracy. And once again, the courts are asserting themselves over the legislature and also in this instance, the will of the people.
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E
Absolutely. And well, just to add one more thing to what you just said, Emma, we just saw an election in Hungary where Viktor Orban was kicked out of office with a big overwhelming vote. But I just want to remind people that one of the reasons that he was able to stay in power for 16 years was because he did exactly what the Republicans are doing right now by redistricting in their way of doing it. Of course, it's parliament. But he made it impossible in a number of different ways for people to vote for the opposition. And it took a very clever politician and people being economically absolutely devastated the country and 16 long years and people finally just getting sick enough of it that they, all the opposition banded together and they were able to overcome him. But 16 years, is that what we're looking at here? Because I don't think the country could. I'm not sure it can survive the next three, much less Republican rule for another decade. I just, I can't even imagine how we'll, we'll get through it. Because these people are radical, they're extreme, and they are moving as quickly as possible toward authoritarianism. Yeah, exactly.
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A
And I just want to point out two more things about this. The Virginia court, the technicality as Far as I understand it involves early voting taking place. And the letter of the law says the two votes by the legislature to set up to just basically create a referendum have to happen on either side of those general elections. And because early voting had started, they said that was during the period that was during the election as opposed to before it, as opposed to like you know, one day, November 2nd, whatever. Juxtapose that or I guess contrast it with what the Supreme Court did in the wake of the Tennessee ruling where 43,000 people had already voted. 43,000 people had voted and they canceled the election as if it was not. Nevermind the fact that like the add on part of like they're not going to announce where your new polling location is. You know, if you are incentivized to go vote for a second time in the same election, you will not necessarily know where you're voting. The other I would say is that you mentioned Louise Lucas. Three days ago, her office was raided by the FBI as a way presumably to punish her for leading this fight. And I wonder how much of that weighs into the decision by the, the Virginia House leader in saying we're good, we're not going to pursue this. We should also say like $100 million deployed. Hakeem Jeffries was taking laps, victory laps around this. And we all presumed like, oh, they definitely did this the right way without any sort of question as to, you know, that would give a toehold for the Virginia Supreme Court. And apparently they didn't. Now, I don't know the, you know, the tick tock on that, but this is a very dire time because what we're also watching with this is we are seeing both on a state level and on a federal level, the lengths in which the various courts will go to facilitate what the Republicans want to do. And that is an indication of like what we think are the limiting principles for how this election goes off may not be limiting principles that in any state where Republicans control, they're going to be able to curtail voting or shape it in whatever way they, they feel they need to. And this has federal implications when it comes to control over the House.
- [39:04]
E
It sure does. And I'll tell you something, I mean, I've always felt like, you know, sure, they'll try to do what they can to suppress voting. They always do. And they'll probably go to greater length this time, even up to and including deploying National Guard troops or something like that. I mean, they refused to rule that out the other day that, you know, well, you know Maybe we might p hegseth is certain. Well, you know, Biden did that, which is not true. He did not. It was the state governors who, you know, sent some National Guard. They deployed them during voting because there had been national natural disasters and things like that, just totally normal stuff. But, you know, he used that as an excuse. So who knows what they're going to do with the voting. But to me, the big thing that they've always been planning on, and this is Stephen Miller's legal group, this is their big thing, is preparing to contest the election should the Democrats win. And they, I'm sure that if it's going to happen in state, this, you know, in these states where there's any kind of a Supreme Court like the one in Virginia, any swing state that may go the wrong way or that may, you know, you may see, you know, a wave that takes out some of their, their red state representatives, may it presume, particularly if they're unexpected. You can imagine what they're going to do. They're going to file lawsuits, they're going to attempt to not seat those people. They're going to use that as an excuse to, you know, wage all kinds of legal warfare during the period after the election and before the new Congress would be seated, which I think is on January 3rd, and, you know, maybe push us into a constitutional crisis. And I which, you know, wouldn't be the first time that this particular gambit has been tried. We know they thought of it 2020. And of course, that's a big part of Trump's, you know, whole, I mean, not that he's strategizing this, because with him, it's just pure id, you know, I won. How dare they say I didn't, you know, but, but all the other people around him, the people who are thinking beyond him and how they can use this, they are getting ready to exploit this idea that the elections are, you know, deeply tainted by rigging by Democrats. And even though, you know, clearly it's the opposite at this point, we can see them doing it in broad daylight. So I'm very concerned. I mean, I think we thought, and I knew that we were getting a little too giddy with the idea that the House was definitely going our way and the Senate was going to be in our hands and, you know, things were going to be able to put a stop to some of this stuff. And, you know, I felt from the beginning, from the first day that he took office in his second term, that this is going to be a roller coaster. We're going to be high here one day and then something horrible is going to happen the next and you know it's going to be like this. It's very hard to take. For people like us and probably everybody who's watching now who pays close attention to politics, this is just, it's just brutal trying to keep up with what's going on. It's awful on an emotional level, it's very hard to take. And when you have things like today with the Virginia Supreme Court doing this and having the first words out of the Democrats mouths say well, you know, we're not going to try and fight back on this. I'm telling you it's just, it's really, really hard. And I think they have to, you know, well, you know you can say they have to do this and have to do that and we have no power over making them do it. But I'm telling you, huge mistake in my view. You come out swinging when they do stuff like this.
- [42:38]
A
And, and you know, as to like sort of the emotional roller coaster ride, I think it was like, you know, and we probably had these conversations. This time last year I was going into the summer, I was like, oh, you know, there's every reason to believe that we're not going to have elections in 2026 or not, you know, not normal, not, not, not. We're not going to have a situation where people vote and we see the impact of that vote.
- [43:07]
E
Whatever, whatever.
- [43:09]
A
You know, the mechanism is. You know, I don't think we're going to have no elections. I think we're going to have elections that are tied up and, and then I think by the fall, you know, deep into the fall, it's like, you know what I think it's too, they, they can't do enough. And you know, you look to Mike Johnson, I can't remember who it was that he didn't seat now but for
- [43:35]
E
months during it was the Arizona Grijalda.
- [43:38]
A
Yes. And you know, I think that was probably had something to do with the Epstein files but I think it was also Mike Johnson's way of saying like I wonder how long I can do this for. And I'll just make a note note to self random Democratic elected I cannot seat them for whatever it was 45 days. I mean the, I mean this is, and you know people talk about the super majority that Obama had. People Forget that the 60th senator, Democratic Senator was Al Franken and he was not seated for like six or seven months because you know, recounts and whatnot. But it doesn't take you seven months to recount. There was a lot of like, you know, lawsuits and whatnot. We could be looking at a situation where for six, seven months, eight months in 2027, we have only 410 congresspeople seated and 25 are being contested and, you know, Republicans control 207 to 203 or something, you know, some scenario like that we don't know. And I don't even think they know. I don't think the Republicans know. I think they're just basically saying, we're gonna throw everything at this.
- [45:20]
E
Exactly.
- [45:20]
A
And we don't have a step by step plan and this is how it's gonna break out. And it's that much more difficult for the Democrats to sort of like defend because there is no plan. They're not like headed to this pass and going to get the high ground here. And so we have to flank them from the. They're doing everything in every state and states, many places where we don't have any power except for a couple lawyers and a legal system that tilts that has shown. I mean, you're one of these judges in a state court or you know, a circuit court and you're looking at like how it, what it takes to succeed in the Republican Party on the Supreme Court. And you're just like, I just got to deliver the, I got to deliver the answer that they want. And that's it. It's a very scary time. And frankly, I mean, maybe we wouldn't know, but I don't get a lot of like sense that Democrats are A, creating a plan to deal with this on day of and B, that they are also starting to like offer plans to fix this stuff when they get into office, which, you know, you want it to like have a constraining impact. Like you, you know, like.
- [46:47]
C
Well, can I add to that and say that like in the sense that the Democrats never took the anti democracy piece of the Republicans seriously. And this goes back, you could say January 6th, but you could also say in their lack of urgency on fighting back on redistricting and gerrymandering for the decades prior. But like Kamala Harris was running a campaign bringing out Republican Liz Cheney to talk about democracy. But it's state level Republicans, it's Republican appointed judges, it's the entire Republican Party. It's Mike Johnson that is now on board for the anti democracy stuff. They just made it about Trump and not the Republicans.
- [47:32]
E
Right. Which is a huge mistake. Huge, huge mistake. I've been writing a lot lately about how the conservative movement led up to this moment. In fact, I wrote one today. It'll go up on the weekend at Salon about the National Endowment for the Humanities. There was a judge that ruled against the, the cuts to the grants that were made by Doge in the early months. Right. You know who was speaking of Liz Cheney, you know, who was in charge of the national, you know, Endowment for humanities for about 10 years, Lynn Chaney. And Lynn Chaney started the crusade against teaching history. That was in those days we called it politically correct. Today it's called called woke. It's not any different. DEI was about affirmative action and multiculturalism instead of dei. All this stuff was done back in, back in the 90s, back in the late 80s. It started in the 90s with people like Lynn Chaney, leading up to a point where we now have, you know, an entire culture that's awash in this stuff. It's the same old stuff. It's not new. And we wouldn't have Donald Trump if it wasn't for Lynchaney. Sorry. That's just the fact. And it's been going on and it's happening in all this. It's what you say, Emma, that's absolutely true about the voting, about the, you know, not contesting things like, you know, not at least not very artfully contesting things like what happened with Al Franken or the redistricting that Tom Delay did back in the early, early 2000s. I remember when that happened, where he decided to redistrict in the middle of the, the decade instead of right after the census as it's always been done. And we all just sit there and went, wait, you can't do that. What? What? You know, I remember writing about it. We probably talked about it, Sam. And you know, just kind of. What? This is crazy. You don't do that. Well, look at us now. They're going to be redistricting every six months if they want to. I mean, this is just, there's no longer. Every election will be contested on that ground of who has the power in the state legislature or a state supreme court to redistrict in their own. And the Supreme Court just validated that by saying, well, partisanship is fine. You can do that. Just go ahead and, you know, redistrict every Democrat out of the state if you want to, that's fine. We're all good with that. And we'll just pretend like by Democrat, we don't mean black people or Hispanic people. We'll just pretend like that's just partisanship. So you know, this has been going on for a long time and here we are today, and we're about to see the result of that.
- [50:09]
A
You can put this, we can put this up. But, but before we do, I just want to, to add that if you follow the gerrymander rulings by the supreme court going back 15 years or so, when Anthony Kennedy was like, Anthony Kennedy was like, well, I'm not sure where I stand on this, but if you can bring me a measure when there is extreme gerrymander to the point where it becomes disenfranchisement, I'll be into that. And then he was out the door and wanted his, his former clerk to be, to replace him. I can't even remember his name right now.
- [50:55]
E
It was Gorsuch, right?
- [50:56]
A
No, not Gorsuch. Kavanaugh. And going out the door, he sort of bagged that whole thing and they allowed gerrymander. So understand where we've come from, where we had a Republican dominated Supreme Court that said, well, if you can prove that there is like excessive gerrymandering to, not only can you just gerrymander the hell out of it, you can hide the fact that you're disenfranchising black people behind it because it's their fault for voting Democrats.
- [51:26]
E
That's right. Vote for Republicans. It'll be fine.
- [51:28]
A
Here is, here is what Democrats could have done. And we could do this for abortion rights. We could do this like, we could do this example for half a dozen things. And it's indicative of Democrats not getting into power and using that power to solidify their power, even if that solidification of power is really about protecting a multicultural world democracy. Put this up on the screen. This is back from like what, 2021.
- [52:02]
C
2021. And I can. That paragraph Matt had up was getting my blood boiling. Ultimately, the advocates fear that the Biden administration, currently focused on the bipartisan infrastructure deal and an ambitious spending proposal, has largely accepted the Republican restrictions as baked in and is now dedicating more of its effort to juicing Democratic turnout. In private calls with voting rights groups and civil rights leaders, White House officials and close allies of the president have expressed confidence that it is possible to out organize voter suppression, according to multiple people familiar with the conversations. I have heard an emphasis on organizing, said Sherilyn Ifill, the president and director counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, who visited the Oval Office to meet with the president two weeks ago. But she added, we cannot litigate our way out of this and we cannot organize our way out of this.
- [52:57]
E
My God. You know, I mean, what. Is this what it's going to take to get anybody to wake up? Apparently not. The guy in Virginia just said, yeah, well, you know, I guess that's that. So I don't know what it's going to take to get people to understand exactly what's happening here. I mean, this is a dire problem. I'm sorry I sound hysterical, and I don't really mean to, but this is. This is really, really bad. And it could, you know, the fact you can just see them cracking a champagne over that Supreme Court decision, knowing that the best we can hope for in the future, it's very likely going to be the tiniest majority ever. And, you know, I. If we're lucky. And that's just, you know, this idea that we could have, you know, just have a decisive majority where the Democrats could prove to the country, look, we've been given a mandate to do these things, and whatever, it's going to be trench warfare until people wise up and understand that they're going to have to fight. And it's like you're. You're talking about, you know, what. What do they. What do they do and how they're just kind of never prepared, really, for what's going to happen.
- [54:06]
C
And that's also entitlement. They feel entitled to the black vote, and they are not doing anything to protect black people in the south from being disenfranchised. And that is, frankly, I mean, Biden's racism and, and his. The way that he spoke. He's spoken about black people, the tokenism with which he treated Kamala Harris. This is a problem in the Democratic Party with the old guard. They do not treat black voters with the respect that they deserve.
- [54:30]
E
Yeah, well, that's true. And I would. I would expect that, you know, that's probably one of the good reasons why the old guard is being, you know, shown the door. And that will make a difference, I hope. I think. I think it will. But basically, I think that at the end of the day, what has to happen, what it just seems to me is that you have to. You can't necessarily be prepared for everything in exact terms like, you know, these. This is the, you know, lay out a set of, you know, you know, ready responses. You just have to respond immediately and respond with defiance. You can. It has to be defiant. There has to stop being this idea, well, we need to protect the norms or this isn't. People won't vote for us. It's too extreme. I mean, it's ridiculous. I know
- [55:20]
A
yes, the Bush v. Gore. I mean, this is, it's the exact same disease that, that permeates the, in this eternal, I don't even want to call it optimism, delusion.
- [55:36]
E
Yeah.
- [55:37]
A
We've had president after president, Democratic president, who has told us that the fever is going to break and, you know, the, our better angels are going to. A failure to use power when the rare times they get it and just a blanket refusal to use power. And I don't know, you would have to do a study, a comprehensive study that is far greater than anybody would undertake because nobody would listen to it after that anyways. But it is quite possible that the reason why we can outrun them has resonance with certain people because that's the way we make money. You know what I mean? It's like. And it makes it easier for us to raise money. They've disenfranchised voters. I mean, I don't know what the incentive structure here is that allows us. And I'm not saying they're all corrupt, but I'm saying, like, that plays a part of it. And then just sheer incompetence. Because when you are trying to protect a hierarchy in a power structure within an institution, incompetence is very often what you look for. Because that person, those people, their incompetence will never challenge the hierarchy like you see it in this administration. The reason why he hires incompetence all around him is because the one thing he knows they'll do is be loyal and they will never, never undermine the hierarchy. And the way in which, you know, the protection goes. No, you know, and what's going on with this DNC autopsy thing is either a travesty or a travesty. Like, there's no. Like, like you can choose. Whatever excuse now they're doing, they're putting up. Do we have like a tear sheet of this? They're now claiming. And a lot of this seems to be leaked through the pod save guys. But the claim now seems to be, you know, we saw reporting in February saying that the autopsy, that DNC had documents that said it was around Gaza. And now we're being told there's nothing about Gaza in these documents. It's just that Ken Martin hired, and I use that term loosely because apparently he supposedly didn't pay him.
- [58:12]
C
That's what he claimed to Jon Favreau. He said that the report was free, which sounds shadier than it not being free.
- [58:23]
A
Like, yeah, the guy just flew around here. Yeah, he took a camper. He took a camper. And you Know, he would go. He was going for college credit.
- [58:35]
E
And.
- [58:36]
A
And supposedly now the line is it's such gobbledygook that we couldn't release it because it was so bad. And I'm sorry for. I guess I'm sorry if I believe that that's true, which I, you know, maybe release it and fire Ken Martin. And if it's not true, release it and fire Ken Martin.
- [59:01]
E
Martin.
- [59:02]
A
I mean, his fundraising numbers, not good, at least in terms of what he's putting out the door and getting. And so I don't know why. And you can't. Like, autopsy seems to be, you know, one of those. Like, you got three jobs. One is to fundraise, one is to win the next elections. And really, the only other thing that's incumbent upon that is figure out why you lost last ones.
- [59:31]
E
Yeah, yeah. It's bizarre to me. I really don't get it when Kamala Harris comes out and says, yeah, release it. You're going. All right. I mean, that was the one excuse that I thought that I thought, well, they just didn't want to embarrass her with, you know, whatever they found out about the campaign and that she, you know, she'd screwed up. She's running, you know, ridiculously, but she is. And.
- [59:59]
A
Matt almost had a heart attack.
- [60:01]
C
Matt's off mic side was hilarious.
- [60:06]
E
Picked up, but I get it, and I feel the same way.
- [60:09]
A
It's so loud. It was picked up on Digby's. It did.
- [60:13]
E
I heard it. Yeah. And you know, the funny thing is, is that had she decided to run for the governor of California, she'd win. She would have won going away, no problem. And it would have been a good job. I mean, what's wrong? Governor of California, big job, Big important job, you know, but just stop. Anyway, she'. And the fact that she's running and she also said to release the report tells me that, you know, if she's not afraid of it, I don't know why anybody else should be. Except for Ken Martin. That's the only one.
- [60:43]
A
A. I would say she may not realize that she should be afraid of it.
- [60:49]
E
Well, that's true. She is running.
- [60:51]
A
But I also. I also suspect that she's not gonna be going with the same campaign crew she did last time.
- [60:59]
E
I wouldn't think so, no.
- [61:01]
A
And I think what she thinks it will do is to exonerates too strong of a word, but be able to shift blame or that it will blame sort of Biden holdovers in those people. And that if she had her you know, but of course, you know, here's the problem. You're running for president.
- [61:28]
E
Yep.
- [61:29]
A
And you're the nominee.
- [61:31]
E
Yeah.
- [61:32]
A
It's really tough to puck, you know, pass the buck. Like, I would have won. I would have won this election. You know, like, we would have double the amount of subscribers. But, you know, the way my parents treated me when I was a kid, it screwed up my ability to increase the number of, you know, business stuff.
- [61:49]
E
So it made me not very good at my job. I exactly can't do it. I'm just terrible. I mean, what can I say? But, you know, it'll be. Be different next time because other people around me who will be much better at making up for my own lack of leadership and ability. So it'll be much better. Don't worry. I've learned a lot since then. No, it's ridiculous. And, you know, I don't really get it. It's. It's. All it's doing is creating, you know, how this is. Is that the Streisand effect? You know, the more you talk about it and don't do it, then, you know, the more people are interested. I mean, I think we'd all forgotten about it and probably would have long ago forgotten about it if they had released it when it was finished. Instead, now we're getting close to an election, and now we're arguing over it. Like, what are you talking about?
- [62:32]
A
Like, that's gobbledygook.
- [62:34]
E
And the thing is that the Gaza part of it, which I have no doubt it played a huge part, I think it was, you know, certainly in the youth, the younger people supposed, you know, up to three. Of course it did. No doubt about it. And so what. I mean, now the whole country's kind of, you know, shifted and coming around to that idea, they would have looked prescient, you know, would have said, you know, gee, maybe we should have really run with that. Look how. Look how it is. I mean, I just don't, you know. Yeah, of course. You know, of course. And, you know, the old, you know, the military industrial complex, there's all kinds of, you know, interests that were involved in all of that. But nonetheless, just out of sheer sort of populist political level, it would have been smart to get that out there and just let that sit for a while and let this whole thing unfold. And look where we are today. We're in a war with Iran at Israel's behest. And, you know, the country is horrified, generally speaking, even a lot of Republicans are horrified. And the Democrats would have looked good for having, you know, been brave enough to come out and admit that, you know, this thing. I mean, it's tough to go up against the Israel lobby and it's tough to offend certain of your, of your base in doing that. That's an important one. It's a moral question. And they would have looked good by now. But, you know, instead, you know, it's like, what the hell is in this? Are the Epstein files hidden in this thing? I mean, my God, put it out there, let's see it. You know,
- [64:03]
A
I don't know. I guess there are, I mean, there are some Democrats we've been interviewing a lot of like, Democratic primary challengers, people who are winning the primaries. And there's a, you know, I wouldn't say a huge, but there's a decent sized cohort of Democrats who are running, at least in some of these primaries, sometimes winning these primaries who I think just have a much more aggressive stance. But I feel like we are still a cycle or two away of really good cycles, if that's even possible for Democrats to win. And never mind the primaries that need to have happen where there will be Democrats who won't necessarily be all ideologically aligned with what I want or even necessarily a majority maybe, but certainly a majority of Democrats who understand the nature of what the Republican Party is. I mean, let's play this clip of Donald Trump. He is falling apart. And much of the ire, the Democrats are focusing on Trump, but it seems to me like they still are dropping the ball in terms of connecting this to the Republican Party. But let's just watch him as he clearly is feeling, to the extent that he's conscious of what's going on around him, a little bit of pressure.
- [65:36]
C
And by the way. FEMALE REPORTER Shocking.
- [65:41]
B
You got a good looking crew back there, fellas.
- [65:43]
A
Yeah.
- [65:45]
E
Mr. President, you are here against the backdrop of the war in Iran. Why focus on all these projects right now?
- [65:51]
A
You know why?
- [65:51]
B
Because I want to keep our country beautiful and safe. Beautiful also. This place was a disgusting place. It was Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and we had a terrible disguise. I don't, you probably don't see dirt, but I do. And you walk down this, this pond, if you would have walked down, they'll tell you better than anybody they had to take 11 or 12 truckloads of garbage out of that lake, out of that water, and it sat down, sat there for years like that. And that's not what our country is about. Our country is about beauty, cleanliness, safety, great people Not a filthy capital.
- [66:32]
E
What is the status?
- [66:32]
B
Such a stupid question you ask, we're fixing up the reflecting pond to the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument. And you say, why are you fixing it up? Because you can understand dirt maybe better than I can, but I don't allow it. This is one of the worst reporters. She's with ABC Fake News and she's a horror show. She's saying, why would you bother fixing this up? Why would I bother taking 11 or 12 truckloads of filth out of the water in front of the Lincoln Monument? That's what made our country great. Beauty, made our country people, made our country great. A question like that is a disgraceful our country. Any other.
- [67:15]
C
I also looked her up, wanted to confirm this woman of color as well.
- [67:20]
A
I was gonna say. I was honestly gonna say, like, oh, well, I'm surprised she's not black.
- [67:26]
C
And that's why he kept saying filth, dirt. I mean, like, that's the way that he speaks about Somalis and she's a black woman. Like, that's what triggers him more than anything. And, and the fact that that is something that he's. Now he is worried about it. We played the clip earlier of him saying that he. We. Some people expected that oil gas prices would go up to 200 or even 250 a barrel. And I was prepared to stomach it. And I think that's what he's hearing. And I think he knows that we're a billion barrels behind and shortages are coming and this is not. Gas prices are not coming down anytime soon. And so he is stressed about that very fact. And obviously it came out in that, in that response.
- [68:12]
A
Also reporting today that the billion dollars for his ballroom is in jeopardy.
- [68:20]
E
Oh, no.
- [68:22]
A
I mean, the. You know, we were talking about this earlier in the week, Heather, the idea that Republicans are more fiscally responsible than Democrats and, and leaving the question aside, in terms of deficit and debts and modern monetary theory and how our money supply, we have a lot more control over it than we've said in the past. What it really shows, not only do Republicans always increase the deficit and Democrats actually close, shows that nobody cares about it and it's only deployed by rich people as a cover for austerity. And by austerity, I'm specifically talking cuts to programs as opposed to like, you know, austerity, the taxes being austere, etc. Etc. And it is, you know, it's sort of fascinating that we still take this seriously. I mean, all.
- [69:30]
E
I mean, it really is. And in fact, you know, I mean, I've been watching this happen. They're getting. They're preparing for the day when they can redeploy this. This trope about how, oh, the deficit is out of control. The Democrats, you've got to cut these programs. They're killing us. But, you know, it's kind of weird because in this, generally speaking, Republicans raise the deficit and they do it through tax cuts, Right? They usually cut the hell out of taxes for rich people, and then they also raise the defense budget. That's their game, all taxes and military. That's what they do. But they generally have tended to more or less kind of leave alone the other programs like usaid. USAID and other programs like that were kind of kept. They might be reduced a little bit, but they didn't just, you know, get rid of them. They talked again, but they didn't really do it because they knew that this was going to be very disruptive and that people would feel it and that voters would be unhappy and that it just wasn't something they did. They just wanted to have Democrats on the hook and tell them that they have to cut it. They didn't want to do it themselves. Trump's not doing that. He came in with Doge and with Project 2025 and Russ Vogt and all the rest of these people, and they are slashing the hell out of programs, I mean, big time. And you're finding that, you know, the grants that are going for medical research, the stuff that's going out for, you know, academia in general, that they're getting rid of the Department of Education and all the money that flows through that to regular primary schools in this country. You've got the health care debacle where they're just really cutting the hell out of Medicaid and then people losing their Obamacare subsidies on and on and on. They're doing that. And at the same time, they're raising spending on the military through the roof. Trillions. Now, one point, Hegset's out there making cutesy videos. We're getting $1.5 trillion for the defense Department, or, sorry, the Department of War. And he's dancing around and acting like an idiot, and you've got tons of money going to policing, and they've cut the hell out of taxes for rich people again. So it's a little bit different of an approach where they are doing both things at the same time. They have gone an extra step by doing what they usually do, cut taxes and raise the defense spending and also cutting all this stuff. So People are aware of the cut, they're feeling it, they're actually looking around. And now it started a war and gas prices are through the roof and inflation's going to rise up very sharply, I think, very quickly. And it's a very, very risky strategy that they have now. You know, we say that I see what's happening from an electoral standpoint maybe, but does electoral standpoint exist? Because I'm wondering if they even care anymore whether voters like it or not.
- [72:26]
A
I mean, look, all these redistricting stuff, these precedents, they're going to be that much worse. You know, they may not get it all done by 2026, but it's only going to continue in that direction for 2028. And the bottom line is you come into Democrats, come into power just to get to parity where we were, just to rebuild these agencies is going to cost more than 100% of what was being spent before to get it back to where it was. Because you have to reconstruct things. You have to reconstruct, in some instances, decades worth of institutional knowledge, et cetera, et cetera. And so it is a brilliant strategy in terms of like long term trajectory for the country to go in a certain way. And it's, and it's, it's just really, the strategy has been we just got to destroy, we got to protect, like you say, we got to protect two silos, and that is defense and tax cutting. And that's it. And like there's a piece in Politico that Republicans are like, voters want us to do something, but we really don't
- [73:37]
E
have any ideas, we don't have anything to do. We've done it all.
- [73:40]
A
Everything that we did, we did everything that we know how to do. We cut taxes and we've cut services to people and we don't know how to do the other stuff. And, and in some level, it's like from a step back and look at the people who benefit from a Republican Party. It doesn't matter if the Democrats are in power for two years or four years. If the trajectory of the government continues in this direction, it doesn't matter. And so we're going to need Democrats who understand this stuff. And I haven't just heard that much articulated about it all, frankly. I mean, I imagine there's some people but.
- [74:21]
E
Well, you know, I did hear, I went and listened to a few. I was kind of skeptical about, you know, Platner up in Maine, just, you know, just kind of peripherally, he was
- [74:30]
A
supposed to be on today.
- [74:32]
E
Well, I Thought I went and watched a few YouTubes and watched him talk. And I have to say, he's, you know, he's really impressive. He's very impressive. And, and I wasn't, you know, Nessa, I didn't have, I, I didn't have a dog in the fight one way or the other. I didn't care about either one of them. Maine, you know, the total opposite end of the country from where I live. But I was interested. I can't remember. Something spurred me. I'm going, I better go listen to this guy. And he's very impressive. And part of it is that he does get the democracy stuff. He says that he doesn't make any bones about it. It's in there. It's part of his rhetoric. He doesn't make any bones about Trump, but he does talk about the Republican Party in the way that you're talking about. And he does talk about this, the wealth inequality, the elite, you know, the wealthy elites that are rigging the system for themselves. And he does it in a very, you know, and it's very Bernie esque in some ways. But it's different with him. He has a different approach. It's just, it's, it's kind of a sort of a holistic way of wrapping this whole. All these topics together. So I'm, I'm enthusiastic about that because if you're looking at a state like Maine and people are responding the way they obviously are to him, and it may just be a function of his personality kind of a. I don't know, he's an appealing character and got a nice deep voice and he presents very well. But what he's saying is if that's appealing to people, that's good news in a place like Maine, which is a swing state, it can go either way. And, you know, if that's something that can be a crossover, I'm all for it, you know, but the problem is, and, you know, we're sort of hedging around this in this whole conversation is, you know, yes. That you have to go up against the Republicans. You've got to go up against Donald Trump. You've got to be prepared for anything and be ready to act in defiance the minute they do something undemocratic like this. And absolutely don't take it or don't say, you know, yes, well, you know, we need to observe the norms or whatever. But there also has to be a reform plan, and I mean a radical reform plan. And what you're just talking about here is, you know, well, we need to rebuild these agencies. We've got to do all that stuff. I'm actually coming to the point where I think it's got to be more radical than that. It has to be a complete rethinking from the top down about how we do this stuff. Maybe this is the time. Maybe we don't have a choice because the other side is so radical now that they're ready to just burn the place down. And, in fact, they may get to it before the Democrats even get a chance to do it. But, you know, and I'm not saying I've got any great big, you know, big overarching, you know, strategy to do this, but I'm thinking that maybe we need to think in bigger terms than we have in the past, because this just. It seems really, really extreme to me what's happening, and it may require an extreme response. And I'm hoping people like, like Platner or. I'm sure there are plenty more that are in politics from that, you know, from that cohort younger, you know, coming, having come of age in this period of radical, you know, encroaching fascism, that maybe they've got some ideas. I mean, I'm eager to hear it. I'm eager to hear what people are saying on that regard. And, you know, and I'm. I'm not of that age group, so if people like me are opening their minds to something, you know, really big, I mean, I'm talking, you know, the whole Supreme Court thing, statehood, all of that stuff, and then a complete reordering of the federal government and the way that it works. And I'd be for constitutional conventions, I'd be for, you know, completely eliminating the Electoral College. I mean, you know, big, big stuff. And I don't know whether there. There clearly is not an appetite for it right now, but maybe that's what we have to be building toward, something
- [78:22]
C
I think people are recognizing, and Matt said this yesterday, that centrists can't govern. They can't. They're not competent enough to govern. Their ideology isn't working. Zoran Mamdani is governing excellently in New York, and even the way that Steyer is running in your state of California, like, I have skepticism about it, but you see that that is where he knows his rhetoric has to meet the urgency of the moment, and that's what's encouraging. And even, like a more moderate candidate, Mikey Sherrill, who ended up becoming governor in New Jersey, she started to update her rhetoric as Mamdani was running, too. To say, like I'm going to declare a state of emergency about the cost of living crisis. Like you're talking about wholesale changes, of course, to our government structure. But I think we're closer than we were before because of the fact that the, the urgency is being recognized by the voter. Voter base.
- [79:24]
E
Yeah, that's an excellent point. It's like it's kind of, it's happening. People are starting to respond to the idea that this is, this is not business as usual and it won't be solved by business as usual and whatever incremental ways, people like Cheryl or some of the others that are, that are out there that are kind of doing big things or fighting back in a, in a, in a decisive way. You know, a guy like, you know, J.B. pritzker in Illinois, whatever you think of him, he's good at that. He's good at coming out. He's good at, you know, saying that and being someone who, you know, at least sort of rallies the troops, if nothing else. And all of that is, you know, hopefully leading us to a place. But I mean, I think it's going to be rough for a while here, folks. I think we are in for a rough ride because the other side is prepared to go the distance to do whatever they need to do to maintain power because they're losing the people. If you look at the polling, they don't even have Trump anymore as their, you know, well, at least we've got Mr. Charisma here. I mean, not that I'll ever understand that, but apparently there were a bunch of people who really thought he was cool. And he's losing them too. You know, they're losing that too. So. And there's nobody to take his place in the party that has that kind of hold on people. So it's, they're basically fighting this sort of rear guard action to stay in power, despite the fact that people do not like it and don't want it and, and I think they'll do anything necessary. You know, part of it is the grift. You know, I mean, this is one of the things that's happening, and you mentioned this earlier, Sam, that, you know, there are incentives, let's put it that way, in politics. I think we all know that there's absolute, you know, there's like, there's an avalanche of cash just racing through our political, political system that has distorted it in incredibly destructive ways. And it's true in both parties. But on the Democratic side, what Donald Trump is showing, you can be openly corrupt and get away with it, no one, you know, you'll just do it. What are they going to do to you? What are they going to do to you? You've got Trump in there. He can pardon you. There's just this sense of total impunity on those people's parts. It's not quite that way in the Democrats. We're still trying to hide it or work against the.
- [81:35]
A
Exactly. I mean the fact is, is that a huge percentage of his base are authoritarians. And you know, the reason why a Democrat would not get away with that is because Democrats would not. There would be too many Democrats who go, hey, hey, what, what's going on here? You're not allowed to do that. I don't care that you're a Democrat. You're just not allowed to do that. And that's where it starts to crumble because you're always going to have the opposition party. Well, Heather, you know, always cheery to
- [82:08]
E
talk to you about this past 10
- [82:12]
A
years we've had some like iteration of this with a brief rest in the in 2021. I remember I, I hold on to pandemic though.
- [82:22]
E
So there was that, you know, I,
- [82:23]
A
I, I, I hold on to like the those first eight months of 2021 where I remember how hopeful we were rescuer and we thought like oh my God, Biden's learned the lessons of the Obama administration and, and those were great times. And I hope, I hope someday. Yeah, maybe someday.
- [82:53]
E
Maybe someday.
- [82:56]
A
No, it's not now. Heather Parton, Salon.com Digby from the blog Hullabaloo as always, thanks so much.
- [83:05]
E
Thanks for having me. Have a great weekend, people. Get some rest. Heather. All right, talk to you.
- [83:11]
A
All right, folks, that's it for the first half of the program today. I think we covered at least a significant portion of the horrors of the week. I know we left a lot on the table. There was a lot of horrors this week,
- [83:29]
C
but we'll get to some of that in the fun half.
- [83:32]
A
That's true. Also, just a reminder, it's your support that makes the show possible. You can become a member@jointhemajorityreport.com when you do, you not only get the free show, free of commercials, but you also get the fun half. So sign up today@jointhemjoreport.com like have a piece of hair on my nose. Also just coffee, co op, fair trade coffee, hot chocolate, use the coupon code, majority get 10% off. I feel like there's some other thing that we should announce but I don't know what is Matt, what's happening in your neck of the woods?
- [84:10]
D
Yeah. Coming up at 3:00 Eastern Time, over on the Jacobin Meg YouTube channel, we talk with Bronco Marchitic, who's been going into a bunch of the Epstein emails, and specifically with regards to Peter Thiel and how close Peter Thiel was to Epstein and how Jeffrey Epstein said, you should get more involved than you are in politics. So, yeah, the shadow of Epstein lives on through a giant surveillance contractor.
- [84:40]
C
Well, and then right after that, didn't Palantir set up a Tel Aviv office?
- [84:46]
D
Yep. It was early in. Encouraging Peter Thiel to get more of a global sense and connect with.
- [84:52]
A
That's not weird. What's weird about that? That's not weird at all.
- [84:57]
D
Widen your horizons, man. Especially to this guy, Ehud Barak.
- [85:02]
C
Yes, right. Right. That's. He made that connection. That's incredible.
- [85:07]
A
All right, quick break. Fun half, three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's gonna be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily gonna be better six months from now than it is three months from now, but I think around 18 months out, we're gonna look back and go like, wow. What? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on. Hold on for a sec. Emma, welcome to the program. Matt, Fun. What is up, everyone? Fun hack.
- [85:50]
F
No, me.
- [85:51]
A
You did it. Fun hack.
- [85:54]
C
Let's go, Brandon.
- [85:55]
A
Let's go, Brandon. Fun hack. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint everyone. I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today.
- [86:05]
E
Fundamentally false.
- [86:06]
C
No, I'm sorry.
- [86:07]
A
Women talking for a second.
- [86:10]
C
Let me finish.
- [86:10]
E
Where is this coming from?
- [86:11]
C
Dude?
- [86:12]
B
But.
- [86:12]
A
Dude, you want to smoke this? 7A.
- [86:16]
C
Yes.
- [86:22]
A
Yes.
- [86:25]
B
Is this me?
- [86:26]
E
Is it me?
- [86:27]
A
It is you.
- [86:31]
B
Is this me?
- [86:32]
A
Oh, that's me. Think it is you. Who is you? No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind?
- [86:41]
C
Sports.
- [86:42]
A
We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism. I'm gonna go smell like libertarians. They're so stupid. Though common sense says. Of course.
- [86:50]
C
Gobbledygook.
- [86:51]
A
We nailed him.
- [86:52]
C
So what's 79 plus 21?
- [86:54]
A
Challenge. Man, I'm positively quivering. I believe 96. I want to say 8, 5, 7, 2, 1, 0, 35. 5, 0, 1, 1 half. 3, 8, 9, 11. For instance.
- [87:04]
C
3, $400. $1900.
- [87:07]
A
5, 4, $3 trillion. Sold. It's a zero sum game, actually.
- [87:13]
C
You're making me think less.
- [87:14]
A
But let me say, this poop, you can call it satire.
- [87:18]
E
Sam goes satire on top of it all. My favorite part about you is just like every day, all day, like, without a doubt.
- [87:26]
A
Hey, buddy, we see you. All right, folks, folks, folks.
- [87:36]
C
It's just the week being weeded out, obviously.
- [87:39]
A
Yeah. Sun's out, guns out. I. I don't know.
- [87:45]
C
But you should know,
- [87:48]
E
people just don't
- [87:49]
D
like to entertain ideas anymore.
- [87:50]
A
I have a question. Who cares? Our chat is enabled, folks. I love it.
- [87:57]
C
I do love that.
- [88:00]
A
Gotta jump. Gotta be quick. I gotta jump. I'm losing it, bro. Two o', clock, we're already late, and the guy's being a dick. So screw him. Sent to a gulag.
- [88:13]
C
Outrageous.
- [88:14]
A
Like, what is wrong with you? Love you. Bye.
- [88:19]
B
Love you.
- [88:21]
C
Bye.
- [88:21]
A
Bye.